demonbaby If you think the new Guns & Roses and/or Kanye West albums are good, you’re either lying to yourself or you just have shitty taste. Sorry. 4:45 PM Nov 22nd

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Are you seeing a pattern in these tweets from demonbaby? A tenor of disdain for musicians he does not like? If these were the tweets of just any average man on the street, I’d think, What’s up with all the grouchiness?, and then I’d pay his opinion no mind. But demonbaby is not some ordinary guy. He is Rob Sheridan, the artistic director for Nine Inch Nails (NIN).

If I were to start taking potshots like these at the colleagues who share my profession, I would quickly find myself alienated from the museum community. It’d be like committing professional suicide. Why, then, does Rob feel perfectly comfortable with attacking other musicians? This isn’t solely an issue with Rob. I’ve seen this attitude from others in the music biz as well. It’s particularly endemic in those who enjoy dark angry music, those who can’t stand one bright note of pop. The anti-establishment attacking the establishment.

I understand the whole anti-establishment shtick. Really, I do. When you’re a creative sort, you often find yourself in the minority within established systems. It’s very easy to stand outside of the established system and flip it off and grouse at it and slink away to do your own thing. What’s much more difficult (and sometimes impossible) is to work within the established system to change it. Hubby gave me a great analogy for this. He said that dismantling a building from the outside is less risky than standing inside that building and removing the support beams. It takes courage to stay put as the building threatens to tumble down around you.

Hmm. What’s wrong with this picture? It’s like a painter hating on a fiber artist because the fiber artist creates with thread instead of paint. It not only looks unprofessional, but comes across as arrogant. Rob Sheridan is a talentedartist. What if Katy Perry was considering hiring Rob for his artistry and then read his tweets about her?

As this is a Frankensteining the Talent Pool post, here is my fervent wish: That Rob Sheridan would have the opportunity to work with Katy Perry, or one of the other musicians he has insulted, and that the experience would give him a new perspective on “establishment” musicians. That he’d see that they are people first, as embroiled in the human experience as he is, and they are not out to personally piss him off with their music. That he’d learn to think about where his unkind words might land before he hurls them out into cyberspace. (Sorry, Rob, but you are an emissary for NIN – sometimes more so than Trent – and what you say can affect how the fans feel about the band.)

In case you’re beginning to wonder, as I was, whether Rob likes any music other than that produced by NIN, he did post this tweet recently:

One of the callers asked if one type of music (say, classical) was better for the brain than another type of music (say, rock). The guest replied that no one type of music was better than another and that to believe so was a form of musical snobbery. The important thing was to find music that you emotionally resonate with and not worry about whether it’s the “right” kind of music. It’s ALL the right kind of music.

I don’t think he’s really out to get clients with his twitter. He already has a steady job and can probably work with any artist he wants purely because he’s done a lot of stuff with NIN. The twitter is a personal thing to get thoughts of his chest. If he wants to call Kanye West shit, he can. It’s his twitter.

The Sensitives – I realize that Rob isn’t trolling for clients on Twitter and that he’s using it for personal reasons, but Twitter is public, so whether he likes it or not, his comments have an effect on people. Sure, he can call Kanye shit, but I can also look at that and think that Rob has a chip on his shoulder the size of Mount Rushmore. It can also make me look at NIN in a different light.

Yes, Rob has a good job with NIN, but what if he wants to do something else in the future? Like work for a different musician? And that musician has a connection to someone he’s dissed, or IS the musician he dissed? It is precisely for this reason that young people are forewarned about what they put on their Facebook and MySpace pages. This sort of thing can haunt a person forever.

It also can have the opposite of the intended effect. Rob dissed Katy. I paid more attention to Katy after his insult and now Katy has another fan. Funny how that works.

I’m constantly inspired by Trent Reznor and Rob Sheridan precisely because they seem to say exactly what they think. In a world where culture is constantly getting corporatised and homogenized and lots of artist’s never express strong opinions because of the fear of the repercussions isn’t Trent and Rob’s attitude refreshing?

The fear of professional repercussions is the fear of someone who isn’t entirely free. Not everyone is always worried about where their next job or paycheck will come from. I think Trent and Rob feel they have a higher calling. They’re trying to change the world.

rob’s dissing artists which produce plastic garbage to sell as music. that’s perfectly fine, i love good pop music and couldn’t agree more with his little twitter rants. bad music is bad music, and thank FSM there’s professionals out there who refuse to shut up about it because it could damage a potential customer connection. i’m also sure there’s enough potential customers who would love him for his hilarious rants. there’s already enough ass kissers to please the plastic producers and their friends.

I guess I’m now an ass kisser because I happen to like Enya and am becoming a fan of Katy Perry. How does that square with my also being a fan of NIN? Or with the fact that I listen to NIN more than I listen to Enya and Katy Perry? Do Dave Matthews Band, U2, Duran Duran and Mika make the cut, or only the bands NIN approves of? Apparently, if I like some plastic garbage, I can’t truly be a fan of NIN. Who defines plastic garbage? Is it anything produced by a record company? Music with a certain beat? An unmistakable cheerfulness?

John has hit upon the true message of NIN – that we shouldn’t be afraid to express strong opinions, to say what we think. However, it appears from the responses I’m getting that only Rob and Trent and anyone in the NIN camp are allowed to express those strong opinions or say what they think. How dare anyone call Rob on something he has said? How dare anyone criticize him? If he started eating live babies for breakfast, would you turn a blind eye?

The post on the forum that is sending people here says that I’m “bashing” Rob. If you think that, then you need to reread my post. I chose my words very carefully. While I allude to the fact that his comments come across as arrogant, I said nothing unkind about Rob, the human being. In fact, I think the guy is intelligent and incredibly talented and I completely agree with him on his views about Prop 8. I have merely pointed out things he’s said that make me tetchy. If he’d said a single one of these items here or there, I wouldn’t have batted an eyelash, but the fact that his tweets came within a short period of time reminded me of the continual bashing popular music takes by musicians who think they are cooler than everyone else. So sorry, but there is no true arbiter of cool. Only our personal opinions guide us, and cool is in the ear of the listener.

One of the points that people seem to be missing with this particular Frankensteining the Talent Pool post is that my tetchiness over Rob’s tweets spurred my own creative thinking. While you may assume that my wanting to see Rob work with someone like Katy Perry is somehow a punishment for Rob, I don’t see it that way at all. Part of the inspiration behind this pairing is to see how Rob’s sensibilities would influence Katy’s creative output. The girl’s got spunk, the same sort of spunk displayed by Trent and Rob, even if some are of the opinion that she’s producing plastic. How would Katy’s music change with the influence of NIN and vice versa?

I was going for the same thing there that I was aiming for in this post: A twisted display of creative fireworks by people who are iconoclastic, strong, and inventive. Let’s put them together in a room and see what they come up with. This sort of experiment may work beautifully, or fall flat, but it’s only by combining the unexpected that we move beyond the usual and get to something juicy.

In case this isn’t perfectly clear by now, I adore the music of NIN. (Go to the search box on my blog and type in “nine inch nails” and see how many posts come up. I dare you.) I also worship Trent’s and Rob’s think-for-themselves attitudes. That, in particular, was what drew me to the music of NIN in the first place.

Given their stance on empowering people to think and speak for themselves, do you really think I’m NOT going to follow their example? Do you think I’m supposed to agree with Trent’s and Rob’s every opinion and just shut up and slink quietly away? Not on your life. Somehow, I think Trent and Rob would be okay with that. And, if they’re not, they’re more than welcome to leave their comments to the contrary, and I’ll question their authority on these matters.

Ok – I am huge NIN fan and along the way have become a fan of Mr. Sheridan’s as well. I have read his twitters as well as random postings his Demonbaby site (which I would suggest you not venture into)., some I love, some I laugh along with, some I wish I had written myself, and some I’m not sure if I should be reading.

As far as his daily musings – he is twittering, to his friends and/or fans. Simply its free speech. He is not setting out to be role model, he is not asking you to agree. He is simply speaking his mind. But if it bothers you, why copy and re-post here? By doing so, perhaps you are simply spreading his perceived ‘offensive-ness’. Or, egad! – sending some of your readers Rob’s way.

My suggestion: Don’t follow his Twitter and you wont be offended. And yes, I have had this issue as well…Consumption Junction and I are not friends anymore. And sorry, “I kissed a girl” is the lamest song riding on the ‘bisexual girls are hot’ trend. And I don’t think were talking about a Jessica Simpson type ‘change of heart’, as I’ve read, she did for the money. Which is so NOT punk.

I think the thing that really scares some of those who oh-so-hate Katy Perry is that if you take out the vocals and listen just to the instrumentation of “I Kissed a Girl” it isn’t all that dissimilar from some of what NIN has done. Same dissonant, low-tone, synth stuff really. I like both.

Hi, Melissa Joy – I think I’ve stated that Rob is absolutely free to speak his mind exactly as he wishes, but I also have the freedom to disagree with what he says. This is how discussion takes place. Have you ever had a disagreement with a relative or true friend? If so, do you automatically decide to disown that person because of that minor disagreement?

Rob’s string of complaints stood out precisely because they came in a string. I didn’t find them offensive so much as irritating. (Where is it written, pray tell, that we should never be exposed to something offensive?)

My brother, a musician, tends to hack musicians he feels have “sold out” or are too mainstream. When he says stuff like this, I’d like to sock him in the arm and tell him to get off his high horse. Draw any parallels you care to, but I’m not going to disown my brother anymore than I’m going to stop following Rob Sheridan because they both say things that periodically bug me.

And, if Rob gets more fans and followers from my blog post, I’m more than happy to send them to him. I’d love for people to see the work he does both for NIN and outside of NIN. He deserves the accolades.

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